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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Germany
Spain
Colombia
Iran
Argentina
Poland
Peru
South Africa
Indonesia
Ukraine
Turkey
Czechia
Romania
Chile
Belgium
Canada
Hungary
Ecuador
Portugal
Netherlands
Pakistan
Iraq
Bulgaria
Philippines
Sweden
Bolivia
Egypt
Switzerland
Slovakia
Austria
Bangladesh
Japan
Tunisia
Morocco
Greece
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Guatemala
Saudi Arabia
Lebanon
Israel
Croatia
Panama
Serbia
Moldova
Ireland
Honduras
Paraguay
China
North Macedonia
Slovenia
Georgia
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Lithuania
Dominican Republic
Kazakhstan
Burma
Algeria
Ethiopia
Nepal
Costa Rica
Libya
West Bank and Gaza
Afghanistan
Denmark
Belarus
Albania
Kenya
Sudan
Nigeria
El Salvador
Kosovo
Latvia
South Korea
Oman
Venezuela
Zimbabwe
United Arab Emirates
Kyrgyzstan
Kuwait
Syria
Montenegro
Malaysia
Uruguay
Zambia
Malawi
Senegal
Estonia
Cameroon
Australia
Finland
Mozambique
Luxembourg
Ghana
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Eswatini
Jamaica
Uzbekistan
Botswana
Somalia
Sri Lanka
Namibia
Angola
Bahrain
Madagascar
Mauritania
Cuba
Mali
Malta
Uganda
Qatar
Belize
Lesotho
Rwanda
Cyprus
Cote d'Ivoire
Guyana
Haiti
Hong Kong
Cabo Verde
Burkina Faso
Congo (Brazzaville)
Guinea
Gabon
Andorra
Togo
South Sudan

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
Mexico
India
United Kingdom
Italy
Russia
France
Germany
Spain
Colombia
Iran
Argentina
Poland
Peru
South Africa
Indonesia
Ukraine
Turkey
Czechia
Romania
Chile
Belgium
Canada
Hungary
Ecuador
Portugal
Netherlands
Pakistan
Iraq
Bulgaria
Philippines
Sweden
Bolivia
Egypt
Switzerland
Slovakia
Austria
Bangladesh
Japan
Tunisia
Morocco
Greece
Jordan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Guatemala
Saudi Arabia
Lebanon
Israel
Croatia
Panama
Serbia
Moldova
Ireland
Honduras
Paraguay
China
North Macedonia
Slovenia
Georgia
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Lithuania
Dominican Republic
Kazakhstan
Burma
Algeria
Ethiopia
Nepal
Costa Rica
Libya
West Bank and Gaza
Afghanistan
Denmark
Belarus
Albania
Kenya
Sudan
Nigeria
El Salvador
Kosovo
Latvia
South Korea
Oman
Venezuela
Zimbabwe
United Arab Emirates
Kyrgyzstan
Kuwait
Syria
Montenegro
Malaysia
Uruguay
Zambia
Malawi
Senegal
Estonia
Cameroon
Australia
Finland
Mozambique
Luxembourg
Ghana
Congo (Kinshasa)
Norway
Eswatini
Jamaica
Uzbekistan
Botswana
Somalia
Sri Lanka
Namibia
Angola
Bahrain
Madagascar
Mauritania
Cuba
Mali
Malta
Uganda
Qatar
Belize
Lesotho
Rwanda
Cyprus
Cote d'Ivoire
Guyana
Haiti
Hong Kong
Cabo Verde
Burkina Faso
Congo (Brazzaville)
Guinea
Gabon
Andorra
Togo
South Sudan